In the wake of a court ruling that bars police interviews with a fatal kidnapping suspect from being used as evidence against her, the prosecution is working to refine what information it can give to a jury at a trial expected to take place two months from now.

Tammy Renee Freeman, 55, of Washington City was granted her March motion to suppress use of the police interviews about the kidnapping of Santa Clara resident David Heisler last year after Deputy County Attorney Zachary Weiland acknowledged officers had told her she did not have a right to consult with an attorney when she asked for it.

The interviews took place amid a multi-state effort to find Heisler, who disappeared during the middle of the night in June 2016 shortly after obtaining permanent custody of his daughter in a contentious parenting rights case. The officers apparently regarded Freeman as not under arrest and therefore not privileged to demand an attorney, but the court noted she clearly was held by the police against her will and entitled to an attorney’s advice under questioning.

Heisler’s body was found in the remote desert north of the Grand Canyon nearly two months later by a federal employee conducting geological surveys.

Buy Photo

Family and friends gather to honor David Heisler as his body is transported to the funeral home Friday, Oct. 14, 2016. (Photo: Chris Caldwell / The Spectrum & Daily News)

Freeman is one of three suspects accused of kidnapping Heisler and leaving him in the desert miles from any help during summer heat that daily topped 100 degrees. The trio were indicted by an Arizona grand jury in April on a parallel murder and kidnapping prosecution, and a federal indictment is reportedly pending in Utah.

“They all have ($500,000 Arizona arrest) warrants that should eventually get them to Kingman,” Chief Deputy County Attorney James Schoppmann said by email Tuesday.

Freeman’s case is the only one thus far to have had a preliminary evidence hearing moving it toward trial as her codefendants, Francis “Frank” Lee McCard, 56, and Kelley Marie Perry, 33, await the federal investigators’ decision on pending charges in that court.

Following Judge Jeffrey Wilcox’s ruling on the Miranda issue in March, Weiland filed motions asking the court to let him use other disputed evidence at Freeman’s state trial. That includes audio recordings of Freeman’s jail conversations with her family as well as written notes found in her cell, and text messages between Freeman’s codefendants that may indicate her involvement.

At issue is whether the text messages provide clear enough evidence of Freeman’s involvement without supporting testimony from McCard and Perry.

Pendleton objects on that basis to the conversations being used to implicate his client unless the two codefendants testify about them at her trial. Pendleton also objects to the use of the jail recordings, complaining that Freeman’s arrest and continued detention stems in large part from the police interviews that the court has found violated her Constitutional rights.

Any ongoing consequences of those interrogations are “fruit of the poisonous tree,” Pendleton states.

The prosecution has used the evidence to support its theory that Freeman drove McCard and Perry to Heisler’s residence to help Perry get revenge after the child custody ruling.

McCard and Perry allegedly beat Heisler and took him to the Arizona Strip south of St. George, where Freeman allegedly met Perry and drove her to Mesquite while they waited for McCard to join them later.

In court Tuesday, Pendleton argued that the jail recordings involve six-and-a-half hours of conversations that cover a wide variety of subjects, and since he doesn’t know exactly which portions of the lengthy recordings the prosecution will use at trial he is frustrated in adequately preparing a defense.

Buy Photo

From left, Suzun Abbott and Debbie Heisler stand in front of the 5th District Courthouse in St. George. The two have cofounded the Blue Butterfly House, a nonprofit organization for families dealing with supervised visitation time. Heisler's stepson, David, died following an alleged kidnapping and abandonment in the Arizona Strip that is alleged to have been in revenge for a child custody dispute that granted him permanent custody of a daughter in 2016.(Photo: Emily Havens / The Spectrum & Daily News)

“I think that there is maybe five or 10 minutes of material that might be relevant,” Pendleton said, later revising his estimate to possibly 15 minutes.

“We’ll need to pare it down some,” he said.

Weiland said investigators reviewed “hundreds of hours” of recordings before settling on conversations that occurred during 10 days. He agreed that the recordings include conversations about issues not relevant to the trial, and said he would have the recordings edited to reduce them to the pertinent material.

“The bottom line is, we believe there’s significant information on those tapes,” he said afterward.

Wilcox scheduled a full-day hearing Sept. 21 to address the evidence motions before the seven-day trial set to begin Oct. 30.